


Be Unbroken (Or Be Brave Again)

by winterfelled



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluffy, Hades and Persephone AU, More tags to follow, So much angst, then angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-31
Updated: 2020-07-31
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:21:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,488
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25620520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfelled/pseuds/winterfelled
Summary: Rhaenys rolled her eyes petulantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "And since when have you ever cared about spring?”Aegon turned to Jon then, an amalgam of emotion flitting through his expression, equal parts humor, arrogance, and something Jon could not decipher. Odd. Usually Aegon was as good as an open book. At Jon's confusion, Aegon begins to laugh, loud and full-bellied, enough to shake the Earth they stand on."Something tells me that this particular spring will be different," he gasps between bouts of chuckles, eyes never leaving Jon's.Jon rolls his eyes before turning away, staring out at fading sun in the sky and the way it paints the world in brilliant crimson and yellow and soft cobalt blue. Definitely one for dramatics.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 11
Kudos: 70





	Be Unbroken (Or Be Brave Again)

He is unsettled. Just as the clouds of dirt lap at his ankles endlessly, Jon feels perturbed enough to be on Earth that his equilibrium could not return to rest.

"Why have you called us here Egg?" Rhaenys asks of their brother, her voice breathy and far away, sloshing in the back of Jon's head like the gentle pull and push of the tide. She huffs in exasperation as the silence drags on while their brother considers her question, though to be fair Rhaenys' temper is always short when it came to Aegon. Out of the three of them, he was the one to inherit their father's flair for dramatics.

"We are waiting for spring, sweet sister," Aegon answer. Finally, a saccharine sweet smile on his face as he regards them. "The long winter is finally over. Is that not something worthy of rejoicing?"

Rhaenys rolled her eyes petulantly, crossing her arms over her chest. "And since when have you ever cared about spring?”

Aegon turned to Jon then, an amalgam of emotion flitting through his expression, equal parts humor, arrogance, and something Jon could not decipher. Odd. Usually Aegon was as good as an open book. At Jon's confusion, Aegon begins to laugh, loud and full-bellied, enough to shake the Earth they stand on.

"Something tells me that this particular spring will be different," he gasps between bouts of chuckles, eyes never leaving Jon's.

Jon rolls his eyes before turning away, staring out at fading sun in the sky and the way it paints the world in brilliant crimson and yellow and soft cobalt blue. Definitely one for dramatics.

•

The Underworld is uncharacteristically warm when Jon returns, almost as if he brings the comings of spring back with him on his heels. The wights that slither with the ebb and flow of the river Styx claw at the edges of ferry, shocking Jon when the boat starts to rock with their insistence to crawl in and steal whatever touch of sunlight that still clings to him.

"They haven't seen light in a long time," Edd, his ferryman, drawls as he pushes back a wight with the blunt edge of his oar. "What brought you to the mortal world?"

"Aegon," Jon answers gruffly, shoulders slumping as they reach the rocky shore of Dragonstone. He passes a Drachma to Edd as payment before stepping out onto the island. The bottom of his feet burn against the smooth pebbles burrowed deep in the fine grains of sand, scalding his skin as he crosses the path to the keep.

"Welcome back my King," Davos greets him with a bow of his head as Jon crosses the threshold into his home. Suddenly he is cold again, almost as if he's been doused with chilling, misty streams of freshly thawed water. He blinks. Once. Twice, before realization dawns on him.

"Where is she?"

"In the throne room, your Grace," Davos mutters, eyes downcast. "She's been waiting a long time."

_She can wait a little longer_ , Jon thinks bitterly before he stalks off to where Melisandre has taken up, exhausted from his trip and just wanting rest his weary bones for an external night.

"—And who would you trust to hold your court?" The red witch asks as if his thoughts are imprinted on his face for the world to see. Jon's expression remains impassive even as hers twists into some version of smug self-assurance.

"Not much court to attend to," he mutters, settling with a slump in his throne, eyes surveying her lazily.

Melisandre smirks. "Not yet but I assure you my King, in a moon's time, Dragonstone will be brimming with new life."

Jon barely manages the urge to roll his eyes at the cryptic statement. "And what has brought you here today?"

"A gift my king," she purrs, gently pulling his fingers open and dropping something into his palm, before allowing his hand to curl up once more. "Plant them in the garden on the next full moon." She bows her head, the color of her dress a vibrant crimson stain against the staunch indigo blue of his world, a burning fire amongst burning embers and just as he blinks, she's gone, a flash of old magic and the lingering scent of something deep and earthy like life itself amongst the rotting smell of death.

He opens his hand when she's gone, and immediately his brow furrows in confusion.

Why had that damned witch venture all this way just to give him pomegranate seeds?

•

Aegon calls him to Earth often. It is on the seventh day that he sees her.

He's ventured somewhere where his brother's voice does not linger, the wet earth beneath his feet warm and the sharp blades of grass tickling his skin in reminder that he's alive, that he feels. When he sees her, first only a glimpse in his periphery, and then he turns and she's everything he sees. Copper hair, glistening in the day like a rust-colored sunset. Fair, unblemished skin and delicate fingers, thin wrists and a long, swan-like neck. Blue eyes, clear as the tide that Rhaenys pulls with each shift of the moon, piercing and erratic and so certain as she meet his and suddenly—

His entire world shifts off his axis. His heart jolts with the impact.

"Are you going to say anything?" she asks, breaking the electricity filled silence between with the melodic lilt of her voice. "You've been standing there a long time."

"My apologies," he murmurs with a gentle bow of his head. "I was simply admiring the flowers."

She blushes, the pink of her skin rosy and glowing just like the petals of the peonies she runs her fingers over. Jon thinks he's never seen something so beautiful as the picture she makes.

"Mother says they're my best work yet," she tells him, grinning widely and the flowers that surround her seem to bloom in her light, turning up to face her as if she were the sun.

"They're beautiful," he tells her, the corner of his mouth twitching ever so slightly as the ground starts sprouting more flowers at her exuberance and her blush begins to darken.

"I've seen you and your brother," she says suddenly, taking her bottom lip between her teeth that inspires something carnal within him. "You have been visiting Earth often since spring began."

Jon rolls his eyes playfully, grinning when he manages to illicit a giggle from the goddess. "My brother is driven by his own whims and I am but a humble servant to them."

"Well I am glad you are such a good brother," she says as her laughter transforms to a contented smile. "It's nice to see such a handsome face for a change."

Jon's heart picks up at her words, and his hand clenches and unclenches at his side as he resists the urge to reach for her and decide whether the apple of her cheek is as soft as he thinks.

Clearing his throat of the longing that has lodged itself there, he asks, "What is your name?"

"Sansa."

"Catelyn's daughter."

Sansa's brow crinkles in confusion. "You know my mother?"

Jon sighs. The goddess of harvest has made no secret of how she abhorred him, of his dour ways and cold sensibilities. For all she represented of teeming new creation, Jon was a reminder of the stain life leaves when it's viciously taken away.

"She does not like me."

"She does not like many people," Sansa answers with a gentle shrug of her shoulders. "My mother is complicated. She thinks that she knows better than everyone."

There is a bitter edge to her tone, a tinge that does not fit and it takes all of Jon's strength now not to reach for her. There is something that pulls at him to her, as if a string is being tugged between them. She must feel it too, because she looks up at him and her hand reaches up and touches the exact spot of her neck that Jon wishes to lave with his tongue and taste the salt of her skin.

"I should go, my mother will wonder where I've gone," she murmurs almost mournfully before she turns her gaze to look at him hopefully. "You'll visit me tomorrow?"

He nods, swallowing back his dry throat as she sighs in relief at his response. Jon hears his name being called suddenly, and he looks over to where Aegon has appeared in the clearing, eyes bright and cheeks flushed. When he turns back, Jon realizes he's alone.

Though, as his heart flutters in his chest at the thought, he won't be alone for much longer.

•

"What is your life like? In the underworld I mean?"

Sansa is lying in the grass by his knee, and she looks up at him with a gentle tilt of her head as he leans back against the tree to avoid the full intensity of her curiosity. It is the fifth time he's visited her since their first meeting, and each time he falls more and more in love with everything that she is. But love is a dangerous notion for him to contemplate, much less act on, and so he attempts to maintain a certain aloofness with her.

Even then, she has a funny way of breaking down all his walls.

"It's dark," he tells her. "And it's cold."

She raises her head, propping it on her hand as she turns and stares at him with bright, gleaming eyes. "Is it terrifying?" She asks.

"Not to me," he says. "But perhaps I'm biased. It's lonely more than anything."

"Will you take me there one day?"

At this, Jon jolts. He looks at her, eyes narrowed and shroud, at any sign of falsity in her demeanor. But she is as open and honest as always, almost anxious as she awaits his answer.

Jon clears his throat noisily. "Why would you want to go to Dragonstone? There are no flowers there."

"But you are there," she presses. "And you said it yourself that it's lonely." She pauses for a moment, taking her bottom lip between her teeth. "Maybe if I came, neither of us would have to be lonely anymore."

Jon shakes his head vehemently at the suggestion, refusing to acknowledge the deep, permeating ache in his chest. "You don't know what you're asking for."

"I know exactly what I'm asking for," she counters with enough petulance that Jon almost laughs. He doesn't however, attempting to hold his ground despite his quickly weakening resolve. "I know you must feel it too, this—this pull between us. Why must you deny it so?"

Jon breathes deeply through his nose, trying to steady his quickening pulse, trying to stop his hands, his thieving hands that have destroyed cities and empires and have stolen fair maidens and the lives of heroes, from reaching for her and watching her crimson hair turn to ash.

"I'll ruin you," he murmurs. Sansa sighs, sitting up and propping herself in his lap, she takes his face between her hands and Jon doesn't know the last time he's been touched with such care. The last time he's been touched at all.

"There is beauty in darkness too," she whispers, gently pressing her forehead to his, close enough that they shared a single breath between them. "If I can make my flowers grow there, what truly are you taking away from me? Why can't we be together always?"

_Everything_ , Jon wants to tell her but decidedly, he does not. He wants to savor this, this fragile, tentative moment, when he allows himself to believe he's not an island, not when she is promises of such warmer shores. It'll have to be the last time he sees her, he decides even as she settles in the crook of his arms, her slender body like the missing puzzle piece to a part of him that he hadn't realized had been missing.

He'll let her go soon, he promises, but for now Jon will allow himself to dream.

•

He doesn't return to Earth again.

He walks around his kingdom with a gaping hole in his chest, frayed and jagged around the edges, and no matter what he tries to fill it with, Jon knows that he's left that part of himself in a meadow with a girl whose brought life to him just as she brings life to the earth itself.

He tries to forget her.

(He fails.)

•

Time, Jon comes to soon realize, move impossibly slow when one's only goal is to move it back.

This must be the hundredth, nay thousandth, soul to have come to be judged by him, and once, back when he had been young and desperate for some purpose in life, the responsibility had filled him with immense sense of pride. Now, as the muses say, heavy is the head that wears the crown and Jon had never felt more pressed by the weight of his life.

"You look troubled, my king."

Jon's head shoots up from where it had been lazily resting on his fist, eyes searching for her voice, until he finds her sat on the stone steps that would eventually lead back to the beach in which the souls were ferried to the island. When she notices his attention, she smiles, and Jon swears the sun appears from behind the perpetual overcast.

"How did you—where did you—" he rushes nervously, crossing the room and helping her to her feet, holding her hands in both of his, the warmth of her skin a reminder of her tangibility. "How did you get here?"

"Your brother found me," she smiles, raising one of her hands to caress his cheek. "He told me he was getting tired of your constant brooding."

"I apologize in advance then, my lady," Jon grins as he leans into her touch. "Any interaction with my brother was bound to be taxing."

"He is boisterous, to be sure," Sansa laughs. "But he brought me here, to you, and for that I can't truly fault him for that."

"Sansa," he whispers, just to say it, just to prove to himself that she's here, that she's here because she wants to be, that she's here for him. Jon hadn't realized how dearly his universe had missed its sun until the very moment she had returned to him. "How long—how long will you stay?"

She smiles softly, leaning forward to brush her lips against his, barely anything beyond the press of her skin, and yet it shifts his entire world off its axis until he is pulled only by her. "Forever if you'll have me?" Sansa says, almost like a question, as if she's unsure of what he'll say. Jon grins, taking her face in his hands and pressing his forehead to hers, inhaling her sweat scent of begonias and beauty and light.

"Forever sounds perfect, my love."

**Author's Note:**

> I love LOVE the story of Hades and Persephone and thought that it perfectly fit Jon and Sansa. I've been itching to write a Hades/Persephone AU FOREVER and finally got around to it. This will probably be around 2-3 parts but while this first part is pretty fluffy, the next 2 are pretty angst filled. Comments and kudos are appreciated! Please let me know what you think! Not Beta'd so any mistakes are mine.


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